In a Word

logodaedalus
n. an inventor of words and phrases

I once had the honour of meeting a philosopher called McIndoe
Who had once had the honour of being flung out of an upstairs window.
During his flight, he said, he commenced an interesting train of speculation
On why there happened to be such a word as defenestration.

There is not, he said, a special word for being rolled down a roof into a gutter;
There is no verb to describe the action of beating a man to death with a putter;
No adjective exists to qualify a man bound to the buffer of the 12.10 to Ealing,
No abstract noun to mollify a man hung upside down by his ankles from the ceiling.

Why, then, of all the possible offences so distressing to humanitarians,
Should this one alone have caught the attention of the verbarians?
I concluded (said McIndoe) that the incidence of logodaedaly was purely adventitious.
About a thirtieth of a second later, I landed in a bush that my great-aunt brought back from Mauritius.

I am aware (he said) that defenestration is not limited to the flinging of men through the window.
On this occasion, however, it was so limited, the object defenestrated being I, the philosopher, McIndoe.

— R.P. Lister

| Language

American Notes

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PostcardOshkoshWIStMarysHospitalCirca1907.jpg

It must be confessed at the outset that Oshkosh is not a beautiful word. Its pronunciation is suggestive of a man struggling with a mouthful of hot mush, and to the irreverent it is a perfect rhyme to ‘gosh.’ But, on the other hand, the word has its advantages. It is an ideal word for advertising purposes. Once heard the word cannot be forgotten. Furthermore, to say that one comes from Oshkosh is in itself a mark of distinction. To be sure, few persons do come from Oshkosh. They are afraid of being made fun of, but when they do wander from the Oshkosh fireside, they attract as much attention as the pachyderm contingent of a circus parade. In a drawing-room the citizen from Oshkosh is the cynosure of all eyes, and he need fear but three rivals–the man from Kalamazoo, the man from Kokomo, and the man from Keokuk.

— Rochester Post Express, March 26, 1911

| Language

Travel Talk

Useless phrases drawn from actual phrasebooks by Swedish linguist Mikael Parkvall, from Limits of Language, 2006:

  • At what time were these branches eaten by the rhinoceros?
  • I don’t play the violin, but I love cheese.
  • I have my own syringe.
  • I had a suckling-brother, who died at the most tender age.
  • The beast had a human body, the feet of a buck, and a horn on its head.
  • Because I was out buying a pair of wooden shoes.
  • I had yams and fish for two days, and then I ate fern roots.
  • I want a specimen of your urine.
  • The corpse will be taken to Tonga.

A Chechen manual includes the phrase “Don’t shoot!”

See Enjoy Your Stay.

| Language

Invention and Dispatch

http://books.google.com/books?id=qUYOAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

While [Thomas Edison was] an operator at one station, the telegraph office was greatly infested with cockroaches. Mr. Edison tacked several zinc strips to the walls at intervals of an eighth of an inch, and applied the positive and negative poles of a battery alternately to the strips. He next smeared the walls above the strips with molasses. The long legged bugs came up, and as they stepped from strip to strip, they ‘closed the circuit,’ received the electric shock and dropped dead by scores. Water pails put at the proper places received their bodies as they fell.

— James Baird McClure, ed., Entertaining Anecdotes From Every Available Source, 1879

| Technology

Antipodes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Antipodes_LAEA.png
Image: Wikimedia Commons

What is directly on the opposite side of the world from you? This map answers that question by superimposing each point on earth with its opposite. Some notable sisters:

  • Beijing, China, is nearly opposite Buenos Aires, Argentina
  • Madrid, Spain, is nearly opposite Wellington, New Zealand
  • Bogotá, Colombia, is nearly opposite Jakarta, Indonesia
  • Bangkok, Thailand, is nearly opposite Lima, Peru
  • Quito, Ecuador, is nearly opposite Singapore
  • Seoul, South Korea, is nearly opposite Montevideo, Uruguay
  • Perth, Australia, is nearly opposite Bermuda
  • Charmingly, Cherbourg, France, is opposite the Antipodes Islands south of New Zealand

W.V.O. Quine explains how an enterprising traveler can arrange to visit two precise antipodes: “Note to begin with that any route from New York to Los Angeles, if not excessively devious, is bound to intersect any route from Winnipeg to New Orleans. Now let someone travel from New York to Los Angeles, and also travel from roughly the antipodes of Winnipeg to roughly the antipodes of New Orleans. These two routes do not intersect — far from it; but one of them intersects a route that is antipodal to the other. So our traveler is assured of having touched a pair of mutually antipodal points precisely, though he will know only approximately where.”

| Science & Math

Dueling Expectations

In 2007, New Scientist announced that the best strategy in a game of rock paper scissors is to choose scissors.

Research has shown that rock is the most popular of the three moves. If your opponent expects you to choose it, he’ll choose paper in order to beat it — in which case scissors will win.

In 2005 a Japanese art collector asked Christie’s and Sotheby’s to play a match, saying the winner could sell his impressionist paintings. The 11-year-old daughter of a Christie’s director recommended scissors, saying, “Everybody expects you to choose rock.”

Sure enough, Sotheby’s chose paper, and Christie’s won the £10 million deal.

| Science & Math

Stump Trouble

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lincoln_debating_douglas.jpg

The voting paradox shows that conflicting majorities can prevent a clear winner even in a fair election.

Sadly, this can be true even if the candidates specify platforms. Suppose there are two issues, x and y, each of which admits two possible positions, x and x’ and y and y’. Then a candidate can have four possible platforms: xy, xy’, x’y, and x’y’. Now suppose there are three voters, each of whom ranks her preferences in a different order:

Voter 1: xy, xy’, x’y, x’y’
Voter 2: xy’, x’y’, xy, x’y
Voter 3: x’y, x’y’, xy, xy’

If the voters could vote on the individual issues instead of having to choose a platform, Voters 1 and 2 would prefer x to x’, and Voters 1 and 3 would prefer y to y’. These are clear majorities. But in practice platform x’y’ will defeat platform xy, since it’s preferred by a majority (Voters 2 and 3).

“Thus, a platform whose alternatives, when considered separately, are both favored by a majority may be defeated by a platform containing alternatives that only minorities favor,” writes Steven J. Brams in Paradoxes in Politics. Public policy scholar Anthony Downs argues that the fact that a majority platform can be constructed from minority positions may make it rational for politicians to appeal to coalitions of minorities.

| Oddities · Society

Safety First

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=NUQpAAAAEBAJ

Patented by Deloris Gray Wood in 1998, the “kissing shield” makes pretty good sense:

It is customary when we kiss to come in contact with another’s lips, and in certain cultures, to follow with a kiss on the skin of each cheek; thus germs can be passed from one person to another. In keeping with one aspect of the invention, if casual contact is necessary and a kiss is appropriate, one can protect oneself from the germs present in saliva or other secretions which might be transmitted from kissing by using a kissing shield.

What sets Wood’s application apart is its comprehensiveness: The shield “can be used especially by a politician who kisses babies” — and one variant has “a pocket sized and shaped to receive the tongue of one of the two persons” to permit French kissing.

“I kissed my first girl and smoked my first cigarette on the same day,” wrote Toscanini. “I haven’t had time for tobacco since.”

| Society · Technology

Round Trip

http://books.google.com/books?id=7CTOAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

John A. “Colonial Jack” Krohn pushed a wheelbarrow out of Portland, Maine, on June 1, 1908, and he pushed it back 357 days later. In the interval he pushed it around the perimeter of the contiguous United States, a journey of 9,024 miles on which he wore out 119 pairs of socks and lost 17 pounds.

On his return Krohn’s barrow was covered with cards; he had delivered a letter to the postmaster of Portland’s namesake in Oregon and returned with the reply. He’d completed the trip in 43 days fewer than expected, he said, though he hadn’t walked on Sundays and had lost 19 days to sickness.

“With some there had been doubts regarding his being able to accomplish such an unusual undertaking, considering his frail appearance when he first started out,” ran one contemporary account. “The great benefits of an out of door life could be readily noted on his return, through his improved look and action in every respect, showing the benefits derived from many weeks and months passed in the open air.”

He didn’t rest long — after writing a book about the adventure, he hit the road again to promote it.

| Oddities

An Early iPod

J.G. Christopher, of Minneapolis, Minn., is the possessor of a canary bird, the voice of which has been developed in a peculiarly painstaken manner, so that now this ‘educated’ songster can successfully render the well-known air, ‘A Life on the Ocean Wave.’ The bird will commence to warble like any other of these pets, and after uttering a few notes will immediately strike into the tune, and when its voice has attained full height the above tune will be sung entire, and in a manner that sounds singularly melodious and attractive, literally setting to note its natural vocal powers. This was only achieved after the most diligent and patient attention. As soon as the bird was old enough to pick up a living it was put in a room apart from all others, and a music-box also placed in the apartment and kept perpetually going, so that this singular pupil had nothing to learn from but that. After four months of such apprentice-ship, the owner was rewarded by hearing his little favorite render ‘A Life on the Ocean Wave’ as naturally and perfectly as if that was the song of its ancestors.

— James Baird McClure, ed., Entertaining Anecdotes From Every Available Source, 1879

| Oddities